Ryanair claims meltdown of UK air traffic control cost it €5.4m

Airline is suing managing firm NATS after 354 flights cancelled

Ryanair has claimed that a meltdown of the UK’s air traffic control system on a bank holiday in August last year cost it almost €5.4m, as it was forced to cancel 354 flights while a further 1,300 suffered delays.

Details of a claim made by Ryanair in London’s High Court against the company that manages the UK’s air traffic control system, NATS, have been seen by the Irish Independent.

In the documentation, the airline says it paid more than €3.3m on providing care and assistance to passengers, as it had to under the terms of EU legislation. This included hotel accommodation, meals and refreshments. A total of 300,000 Ryanair passengers were affected, according to the carrier. It said it had to operate 17 “rescue” flights.

The airline, headed by group chief executive Michael O’Leary, says that NATS should have to pay back the money the carrier had to spend as a result of the system failure.

“The shutdown of the defendant’s automated system, and resulting traffic flow restrictions, caused massive disruption to flights scheduled to pass through the airspace for which the defendant provided air traffic services,” Ryanair states in its claim.

Ryanair is also seeking interest at a rate of 8.5pc on the €5.4m it is claiming in damages.

That has added €308,000 to the cost of the claim since August 30 last year, with the interest accruing at a rate of more than €1,200 a day.

Ryanair says it also had to spend €1.4m to provide passenger refunds under EU rules; €84,000 to passengers under EU compensation rules; €40,000 for care and assistance to its own cabin crew, and there was €481,000 in lost revenue.

On August 28 last year, the NATS’ flight-planning system crashed, resulting in flight cancellations that disrupted more than 700,000 passengers. An interim report published last month found that the malfunction resulted in “considerable financial and emotional consequences” for affected passengers.

In March, Ryanair called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign and said NATS should have to reimburse airlines and passengers for the costs they suffered as a result of the system collapse.

Airlines planning to operate flights through controlled airspace are required to file a flight plan that contains information such as aircraft type, speed, and routing.

The NATS failure was caused when a system dealing with flight plans was unable to properly process data for a specific flight from Los Angeles to Paris Orly.

Processing of flight data then resulted in errors being generated on the system, with the software subsequently putting the system into maintenance mode in order to prevent the transfer of what it believed was corrupt flight data to air traffic controllers.

At that point, further automated processing of flight plan data was impossible and had to be undertaken manually.

Ryanair says in its court complaint that it has paid €84m a year to NATS for services.

“The defendant owed Ryanair a common law duty of care in tort to take reasonable care in the provision of air traffic services not to cause Ryanair loss, on the basis that it was reasonably foreseeable that the defendant’s negligence might cause loss to Ryanair,” the airline has argued.

NATS previously confirmed it has been served with legal proceedings by Ryanair as a result of the events last year and that it would “respond as required”.